“Is he dead?” Claire’s heart was racing, and not just because she’d nearly gotten herself barbecued. . . . Myrnin was just getting better, just becoming himself again. For Ada to do this to him, now . . .

But Michael was shaking his head. “More like he’s unconscious. I don’t think he’s hurt too badly. We just have to break the circuit.”

Claire hunkered down, trying to get a look at Myrnin’s face; his head was turned to the side, but his black hair had fallen over his eyes, so she couldn’t see if they were open or closed. He wasn’t moving. “We need something wood or rubber to push him off the metal,” she said. “See if you can find something.”

And with a snap, the lights went off. Claire’s breath went out of her, and she felt her heart accelerate to about two hundred beats a minute when she heard Ada’s cell-phone-speaker voice whisper, “I don’t think you should do that.”

“Michael?”

“Right here. The circuit’s still on to the keyboard; I can feel it.” His hand touched her shoulder, and even though she flinched, she felt reassured. “Here. Take this.”

He handed her something. It took her a second to figure out what it was—a hunk of wood? It felt odd. . . . “Oh God,” Claire blurted, “is that a bone?”

“Don’t ask,” Michael said. “It’s sharp on one end. Organic, like wood, so it makes a good weapon against vampires. Just don’t stab me, okay?”

She wasn’t making any promises, really. “Help me with Myrnin.” She carefully reversed the bone in her hands to the non-sharp end, and used the flashlight to check that Michael had something nonconductive, as well. He did, and it was more bone. It might have been a rib. She tried not to think about that too much. “You push from that side; I’ll push from here. Push hard. We need to knock him completely away from the panel.”

Claire’s cell phone screamed so loudly that it seemed like the speaker was melting from the force of it; the sound dissolved into high-pitched static, and Claire took a deep breath and put the end of the bone against Myrnin’s shoulder. He was wearing a black velvet jacket, and the bone looked very white against it, almost blue in the Maglite beam.

She saw Michael as a shadow in the backwash of the light. “Ready,” Michael said.

“Go!”

They pushed. Michael, of course, had vampire strength, so it was over in a flash—Myrnin’s body flying backward from the console, crashing on its back in the darkness. A glittering, frustrated arc of blue sparks from the keyboard snapped toward Claire and fell short.